Harriet looked up at him suddenly before she could control herself. Rachel’s hand trembled under her own. Crowther felt the skin on his neck grow cold. It was inevitable; he had known it must come to this. He was exposed, but he wondered if the squire was quite the tactician he had thought. He had played his trump early. Even as he waited in those long, silent moments for the words to come to him, he wondered what the squire feared so much that he would lay down his one good card so early.
Crowther looked about him. Michaels regarded him steadily, the various faces, young and old of the village, observed him with cautious attention.
When he was a very young child his brother would make him perform little plays with him for his father’s household. His brother had loved it, loved and hungered for the attention of those ranks of faces in front of him. He himself had always wished to shrink, would hurry through his words in an attempt to retreat to the safety of the wings, shouting out his text in a rush. His brother would put a hand on his sleeve as they rehearsed and counsel him, “Go quietly, brother. Make them lean forward to hear you. Command their attention, don’t bludgeon them with your speeches.” Crowther wondered if his teaching would serve him now. He let his eyes travel slowly across the crowd then looked down at his cane. Then he spoke.
“You force me to recall what I would choose to forget. But I shall answer you, here, and give my history. We shall let these people judge if I am fit to comment.” The crowd seemed to whisper and sigh. “I was born the second son of the baron of Keswick.” He paused, and a baritone in the back of the room spoke distinctly.
“A northerner. Well, any man might wish to hide that.”
The man was shushed, though a quiet smile seemed to travel through the room like a breeze. It caught on Crowther’s thin lips and lifted them a little. Only the squire seemed immune, his thick frame tense and held solid. Harriet looked across to where Hugh and Wicksteed were sitting. Hugh was looking at his shoes, but Wicksteed had turned and was watching with an expression of polite amusement. The smile left Crowther’s face and he looked down at the dusty gray flags at his feet as he continued.
“My father was murdered almost twenty years ago, and my brother hanged for the crime.”
He remembered Harriet’s performance at the last inquest, her fluttering modesty that had called up all the protective instincts of the village. He kept his eyes low and his voice soft. He could feel the crowd straining forward toward him. You were right, brother, he thought.
“I did not wish the title, so I renounced it and have since devoted my time to study throughout the intervening years. I have hidden from the past in my books and in the society of the most learned of men. I have come to know many mysteries of the human body, which is a miracle we each carry with us every day. If I can add but a little to our knowledge of ourselves I will die a happy man.” He could feel the warmth of sympathy in the room. How people love a good tragedy, he thought. Pity and fear ebbed round him, warm waters in which to drown. “Crowther is a name from my mother’s family. I have every right to it. Legal and moral.” He lifted his eyes, and let his voice take on its usual dry edge. “But whatever my name or your ...” he paused... “insinuations, tell me what they have to do with the fact that Nurse Bray was tied around the wrists and hit over the skull before she was hanged.”
He let his voice grow in volume and pitch; it lifted the crowd to an outraged howl of agreement. The attention of the room, hostile and indigant, turned to the squire. He was still too angry to feel the mood of the room, and sneered.
“Perhaps your experiences have clouded your mind, Mr. Crowther. Given such a pitiable past, you could be forgiven for seeing murder everywhere.”
Crowther felt a spasm of tiredness and irritation. Damn these people. He wanted only to leave here and be among strangers again. The crowd looked at him, wavering. Harriet put down her sister’s hand and stood.
“And mine, Mr. Bridges? What experiences have clouded my mind? I saw the same marks as Mr. Crowther described.” She felt herself blush. “And, sir, I think it a shabby thing to force a man to admit his tragedies in public. If Mr. Crowther wished to keep his past confidential,” she paused, “well, he has the same right to his privacy as any freeborn Englishman!”
The noise in the room broke and swelled in approval. Even the squire could feel the push of it against his sides, and began to look about him, realizing too late perhaps that he had misplayed the business.
Michaels leaned back comfortably against the wall with a small smile.
“Go and look at the nurse again!” Harriet saw out of the corner of her eye Hannah cup her hands to her mouth.
“Justice! In the name of the king!” shouted others.
The coroner waved his hand despairingly, trying to make himself heard over the noise.
“Please, please! If we could just take our seats.” He turned toward where Hugh Thornleigh was sitting. “Mr. Thornleigh, you were there when the body was found, I believe: did you see these marks?” The crowd became suddenly quiet again. It seemed as if every individual in the room had inhaled and now waited for him to speak. Thornleigh did not stand, and seemed to address his words to his boots.
“Yes, I cut her down. Can’t say if they are rope marks. But I saw marks there, true enough.”
The crowd groaned and shouted. The squire turned white and spun on his heel, storming out of the room. The shouts grew again, and a low hissing began to circulate under it around the room. Wicksteed put a hand over his mouth as a man might do trying to hide a laugh. The coroner trembled, his voice shivering and high.
“This is unacceptable! I cannot run the court in this way! The sitting is suspended. I will return in one week’s time.”
“Don’t bother, lickspittle,” said the voice at the back.
The coroner gathered his papers and scuttled out of the room in the wake of the squire, leaving his jury open-mouthed and directionless behind him. Rachel felt a hand tug gently at her sleeve, and looked into little Jack’s white face.
“Am I not to testify? Mr. Thornleigh said I was to testify.”
Rachel heard the crowd rock and exclaim around them.
“No, Jack. Not today, I think.”
8
“Well, that was exciting,” Rachel said dryly as the room began to empty. Harriet patted her hand, then turned to look a little nervously at Crowther. Now that the passion had left him he looked very gray and older than she had seen him before. His head was bent forward a little, his hands clasped on top of his cane. It was an elegant piece of work, the wood black and heavy, its head, half-covered by Crowther’s thin fingers, a ball of worked silver.
“I have not seen you use a cane before.”
He did not look at her.
“I am at a delicate age, Mrs. Westerman. One night’s loss of rest can make me an old man.”
“You are not so very old.”
There was a flash of a smile in her voice; he looked up at her and she was sorry to see his face looking dry and bitter.
“Indeed, madam? I am so glad you think so.”
The tone was hostile enough to make her blush and look away, but before more could be said, Michaels strode back into the room and spoke.
“His hand has been forced. He’s just arrested Hugh for the murder of Joshua Cartwright.”
Rachel put her hand to her face and Harriet stood quickly.
“Here? Now?”
Michaels nodded. “The squire said he has taken evidence from the vicar and Hannah, though it’s been done informally as yet, and has told him he is to remain at home. Probably in the hopes he’ll put a bullet in his brain and spare us the trial. He may do as well, if I know Thornleigh. Innocent or not.”
Crowther still had not altered his posture but spoke. “Perhaps that would be as well.”
Harriet felt the blood rise in her throat, and she turned on him sharply.
“Really? Perhaps the squire was right and your secret past . . .” she put enough emphasis on “secret”
to make him wince, “has made you a lover of neat endings. I am surprised your researches have led you where they have, if you value neatness above truth.” She felt suddenly the cruelty in her own words and put her hand to her eyes. “This is not right. We must think further, and quickly. Please, let us go somewhere we can talk freely.”
She saw he was become a little gray around the lips, and a panic that she had torn down in an instant whatever trust and companionship that existed between them pricked at her skin, making it hot and angry. She felt tears rise behind her eyes. “Oh, how can you just sit there?”
He did not look at her; only the tight, thin lips moved.
“You seem capable of talking freely enough here, Mrs. Westerman.”
She bit her lip and her words deserted her. Instead, she looked at him for a long moment, then turned with a groan that could have been frustration or grief and got up to leave the room, the need for movement too urgent to resist. Rachel stood to follow her, then hesitated and took a breath.
“Mr. Crowther. I do not think Mr. Thornleigh is responsible for any of these deaths. You yourself have suggested other scenarios ...”
Crowther met her eyes, his own heavily lidded, a slight sneer on his lips. “Perhaps my solitude has made my imagination fantastical.”
She continued to look at him. “Please help us.”
He returned his gaze to the silver mass of fruit and vines that formed the head of his cane, wondering what gods had prompted him to bring it with him this afternoon. It was the one thing he still possessed that had belonged to his father. Rachel too waited a moment, staring at his sharp profile, then realizing she would get no answer either, turned and followed her sister, her pace more respectable, her shoulders drooping. Michaels spread his hands in front of him and picked at something lodged under the nail of his right thumb.
“Terrible creatures, ain’t they, Mr. Crowther—other people . . .”
Crowther stood and left with a steady stride. Outside, men and women paused in their various conversations to look at him. He walked on.
Graves was surprised to find how close they were to Leicester Fields. He was uncertain if Mr. Chase wished to be accompanied any farther, since he had set off at his usual punishing pace, but Graves still had his half-story of Alexander turning in his mind and hoped to learn more, whatever Mr. Chase had said about his further ignorance.
They turned into the open space of the fields and found themselves immediately pressed against the wall of one of the houses bordering it by a rush of men wild-eyed and hallooing, driving in front of them a startled cow into Charing Cross Road. Someone had tied a blue cockade to the animal’s head, another flicked about on the end of the poor creature’s tail. She had, it seemed, been made a temporary mascot. The pinched faces of the men who slapped her sides and urged her on split with glee, their eyes were glittering and small. The cow gave a startled low and tottered on as one man whipped her across the rump.
“Nooo pooopery!” the man cried and his companions hugged themselves with joy and took up the shout, pushing the poor beast past them. Graves thought of the imps in hell on the frescoes of his father’s church. Some had been painted over, their tortures too salty for the growing nicety of the church, but he had been fascinated as a child by those that remained, their little dark bodies and wide grins as they tortured the waxen, naked bodies of the fallen. He thought he saw them again now, in the smoke-stained faces of these raggedly dressed warriors of Protestantism, in their wild delight in public violence and desecration. He was, for a moment, childishly afraid. Then he heard Mr. Chase gasp.
“Oh, good Lord!” Graves turned to see where his companion was pointing. “That is Lord Saville’s house.”
Graves had walked this way often enough in the past to know what he should in rights be seeing, an elegant white stone front, with a clean step and polished fixings, but some dark hand had passed over it, and everything that had once appeared solid, comfortable, a symbol of wealth and civility, was on fire. Flames licked out of the top windows, touching their orange tongues to the roof slates, and sucking down the guttering; the second floor belched smoke through burning drapery, and below them, where the flames were still slipping and curling, Graves could see shadows moving; every minute one would come forward, smoldering and laughing, to throw plunder down on the street below. The watching crowds cheered and danced, their soot-streaked faces shining and joyful, mouths open, wild. Graves caught his breath and murmured, “The seas are bright, with splendor not their own, and shine with Trojan light.”
Mr. Chase turned to him, a little confused. “What, Graves?”
“Virgil. Mr. Cowper’s translation.”
Mr. Chase coughed a little and turned back to watch the flames.
The fire was too hot even for the bravest of the plunderers now. As they watched, the last of them scrambled out of a parlor window, his coattails alight and a large gilt mirror tucked under his arm. A dozen men stamped out the flames for him as he stumbled into the crowd, laughing like a child, then clapped the man across his narrow back as if he had saved a soul from the fire. Between the bodies of men gathered around it, Graves could see the pile of plunder on the road. It was like seeing the guts of a carcass spilled out on the backyard of the butcher’s shop. He could see carved gilt chairs upended and a leg snapped and splintered, books, open and torn, fluttering helplessly, great tapestries flung down and now being wrestled into improvised cloaks and blankets by the crowd. This was all it took, then. A day or two, a fool with a petition, and there was nothing safe or sacred in London. Mr. Chase’s thoughts must have been moving in the same direction as his own.
“We walk a narrow path, Mr. Graves.”
The young man did not reply, but let his eyes close slowly and breathed in the smoke, trying to feel its texture on his tongue so that if he needed to write about it, he could bring it back. Even at this distance he could feel the heat from the broken, burning house warming his face. He opened his eyes suddenly and looked hard into Mr. Chase’s face.
“Mr. Chase—the locket, I have been thinking on it. Did it belong to Alexander’s mother?”
Mr. Chase turned back to the fire, to the gibbering crackling crowd below it.
“To a young girl. That’s all I know.”
There was a short loud cheer from the other end of the street. Graves and Mr. Chase, like the looters, turned to see a company of soldiers, muskets over their shoulders, progressing across the open space of Leicester Fields. There were only twenty of them, but the order and determination of their march made them seem somehow much more considerable.
“A young girl?”
Mr. Chase continued to watch the soldiers.
“That was all he said. ‘I think it was the young girl’s.’”
The soldiers’ red coats stood out against the green, their white chasers glimmered and the dark wood of their muskets looked businesslike. They were followed by a ragtag group of men carrying buckets. Graves thought them too late to do anything to save the house, but it seemed the hopeless-ness of the case would not be enough to stop them trying. The crowd seemed to shrink, the less bold, or the less drunk, slipping back into its folds, lowering their heads. The company officer called a halt ten yards from them.
“Drop what you are carrying, and leave this place. I order you in the name of the king!”
It was enough, it seemed. The mob, so ungovernable before, began to thin. It was sulky; an overfed child slinking away. The men with the buckets ran forward. Graves wondered if any of them were attached to Lord Saville’s family. One at least had tears running down his face. Why were they willing to make the effort, he asked himself. Perhaps to give themselves the comfort in future days of saying they had tried. The officer watched them make for the fire, and in that moment a stone flew, hard and fast from the center of the retreating crowd, and struck one of the soldiers above the eye. The man’s forehead sprang with a flow of blood at once, and he swung his musket from his shoulder into the firing position. Hi
s officer stepped forward.
“Put up your arms, Wilson. You’ll fire on my order or not at all.”
Wilson froze for a moment, then put up his musket again and wiped the blood out of his eye, his stare fixed all the time on the retreating crowd.
“Bloody-backed fuckers!” someone screamed from the mob as they turned out onto the road. The soldiers did not move, but watched till the last of them scurried out of the square, one thin man glancing again and again over his shoulders, and trying, it seemed, to dive through the legs of his companions to the relative safety of a guarded position, further away from the polished stocks of the guns.
Graves looked at Mr. Chase. “They are called bloody-backs for the color of their uniforms, I suppose?”
Mr. Chase nodded. “That, and the army likes its discipline, I understand. Every man in that company will have whip scars across his back among the war wounds, I’d reckon.”
Mr. Chase continued to watch the flames, and the attempt of the bucket-carrying men to douse them. The older fellow that Graves had noticed had come to a halt, and watched the burning like a child whose favorite toy has been destroyed by some act of adult carelessness.
“I was wondering why Alexander put the children into your care, rather than my own,” Mr. Chase said quietly, without looking at Graves. “Perhaps, for all that he had left his great family, and whatever horrors drove him from them, he still wished his children to be raised by a gentleman.”
Graves looked at him, frowning in surprise. “You are a gentleman, sir.”
Chase did not smile. “No, lad. I am become a little like one, but we both know it goes deeper than that. However many great houses I walk into, they can still scent the workshop and warehouse on me. Oh, England! I was born as those fellows there were,” he waved a hand toward the rank and file of the soldiers, “and every Englishman knows it, soon as I open my mouth, or make a bow. I wonder if Alexander even knew that that was floating in his mind when he wrote down your name. You have something I do not, though I could buy you and a dozen like you with the change in my pocketbook.” Graves looked at his feet, and Mr. Chase turned to him with a half-smile. “Not your fault, boy. I mean nothing against you.” He twisted his hand around the railing beside him, as if preparing to pull it free. “I have bred a daughter fit for a gentleman, though. That is my comfort.”
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